TILE TYRANNY OF UPHOLSTERY.
THE tyranny of fashion in dress is no doubt very absurd, but it is not half so absurd as the tyranny of fashion in upholstery. There is some sort of reason for the one, but there is none at all for the other. Female fashions, in particular, are ultimately regulated by artists of more or less ingenuity and knowledge, the process of establishing a new fashion being something of this kind. Designs are made, in the first place, by designers in the pay of the great Parisian milliners, are tried on people of the demi-monde, who rather like to be conspicuous, are submitted, if they succeed, to the Empress and a few great ladies, and if approved are worn, and then, being puffed by milliners and described in fashion books, make the tour of Europe. They are very seldom, therefore, wholly devoid of taste or true principle, especially as to the combination of colours ; and it is an open question whether "fashion" in dress does not preserve society from one of two disasters,—the wearing of outrageous garments by women sure to be imitated, or the general adoption of a costume pretty or ugly, which thenceforward would never be seriously changed. The unchangeable costume might be a pleasant one for family treasuries, but it would tend slightly to stereotype a society in which the most dangerous of temptations is towards stereotyping. It must never be forgotten that in Europe for a woman to be very conspicuous is either to be slightly immodest, or to be thought so,—either being a sound reason for a certain tameness in submitting to uniformity,—and to endure perman- ence and uniformity at once would ultimately extinguish the faculty of discrimination altogether. That argument can hardly, however, be pleaded in defence of the tyranny of upholstery, in which, when excellence has once been attained, novelty is of very minor consequence, and permanence is the condition of true art. Without permanence the outlay attendant on good designs and thorough workmanship cannot be incurred, and people who like " pretty things," but have short purses, are compelled to submit to the tender mercies of uphol- sterers, who have just three objects—to keep up the practice of setting up a drawing-room, to invent no furniture which requires individual work, and cannot, therefore, be turned out in thou- sands of specimens, and to change such designs as can be so turned out as often as possible. With these objects they are com- pelled to make war at once against solidity and originality,—a permanent war, in which, as they well know, they are battling for the prosperity as dear to them as life.
The very highly placed and the very rich often set them at defiance, the mania for new furniture seldom seizing a very old family; while the rich, whom it does seize, gratify it independently
but the upholsterers usually win their battle against the middle- class, which has on such subjects neither originality nor nerve. They dare not even distribute their rooms as they like. There are thousands, tens of thousands of women in England, with from £300 to £3,000 a year, who persist in ruining good houses by devoting the best apartment,—usually in London a lop-eared suite,—to a drawing-room filled with furniture they dislike and arc afraid to break, but think it correct to have. They want one of the two rooms, it may be, very much to sit in, and let their children move about in—for a " living-room" in fact—but they think it necessary to their " position " to furnish both in a way which renders easy life impossible, and necessary to their purses to protect such furniture till, from the housemaid to the owner, it is a nuisance to all who come in contact with it. A "parlour" in the old sense—that is, a light room filled with tables, chairs, and sofas to lounge on, all simple, all solid, and all meant to be used, would answer their ends exactly, and so would a library ; but they cannot have either, because if they did their cousins and visitors might by possibility think that arrangement unusual. Take, for example, the imbecility on which Mr. C. Eastlake, in his recent charming hook upon " household taste," is so justifiably severe. Half the educated women in England recognize the beauty of the Turkey carpet, with its gently blended shades, its softness to the foot, its durability, and its curiously pleasant relation to furniture of almost any colour, and some of them are aware that it is by far the cheapest of all carpets in the long run, except, indeed, the beautiful hand-made fabrics now turned out in the factories of Mirzapore and the jails of the Punjab. These latter are absolutely perfect, Cashmerians having designed the patterns, while convicts dare not turn out any but thoroughly honest, painstaking work. They know also that a carpet has no business in dusty corners, under bookcases or chairs, in places where convenience as well as beauty require either stained boards, or, better still, encaustic tiling ; but they persist all the same in buying a Brussels carpet twice as big as they want, woven of a material which loses its freshness in two years, and of a pattern often glaring, and usually absurd. Who treads on flowers anywhere if he can help it ? They can give no reason for not putting the carpets they acknowledge to be good in the drawing-room, except that " no- body does it,"—the very reason why, if they want to make society as various in its external fittings as possible, they ought to choose and arrange furniture as they please. It is the same with their mirrors, and mantelpieces, and fire-places. Why are mirrors in a climate like that of London always to have gilt borders, which seldom suit the paper, are often spotty, and never set off the glass ? Why not? asks Mr. Eastlake :—" Let such mirrors be fitted iu plain solid frames of wood, say three or four inches in width, enriched with delicate mouldings or incised ornament ? If executed in oak, they may be left of their natural colour : if in the commoner kinds of wood, they can be ebonized (i.e., stained black), and further decorated with narrow gold stripes running transversely over the mouldings." Just because the upholsterers will not let them, putting on all such work a prohibitory price, and forbidding clever artizans" to carry out private orders for themselves. Nothing is so costly as a piece of fancy furniture made to order, and nothing so reprehended by the average upholsterer as originality, except, indeed, solidity. Why should not a cabinet in a drawing-room be solid, even when it is not made of ebony and ivory,—which uphol- sterers permit, not because they admire graceful work, but because they love expense,—but why not also oak very slightly inlaid ? Such a cabinet would outlive all the vulgar ormolu and marqueterie ever imitated from the designs which pleased Louis the Fifteenth's vulgar mistresses. Mr. Eastlake, in his attack on the upholsterers, goes too far, we think, in the direction of solidity and medimevalism ; his book-cases, in particular, are architectural labours, and he forgets that a sofa is not meant for sitting, but for lounging ; but there is surely a medium between his proposals, suggested by a sense of recoil, and the gimcrack rubbish now scattered about drawing-rooms. Then there is that patent absurdity, a bright grate. Ladies hate bright grates, because they are never bright ; housemaids because they have to brighten them ; men because they interfere with the ready lighting of fires ; yet all three sub- mit to a fashion as irreconcilable with taste as with convenience. A fireplace should be either dead-black, as iron would be after contact with coal, the ornament being heavy bas-reliefs ; or it should not be of iron at all, but of fire-proof tiling, with a round vase for the coals in the centre,--a vase of bars, the cheapest, simplest, and hottest form of grate, which can be lighted when it is wanted, and not only when it is convenient to the servants that it should be cleaned. Under the influence of the same feeling, the fire-irons are brightened till they are conspicuous objects, and the coal-scuttle is made a kind of ornament, whereas fire-irons should be of black iron and dead brass, as invisible and useful as possible ; and the coal-box should be a box, as Mr. Eastlake says, to keep a dirty though useful substance out of sight. We are inclined to think a coal-scuttle a surplusage, that the coal should be kept in a pit in the hearth, filled every morning before the fire is lighted ; but if this is difficult, it is, at all events, easy to make the coal-scuttle unobtrusive and of such a shape that, while its contents cannot fall upon the floor, it shall, when filled, be as easy to carry as the old brass bucket, which, pace Mr. Eastlake, is amongst the worst articles of furniture ever devised by man. Rugs, if Turkey carpets were exclusively used, would speedily be pronounced an abomination, especially iu small rooms, where they destroy the appearance of breadth; or restored to their original meaning as mats, to prevent wear in any place where the feet are constantly shifted. Short, broad mats of skin,—bearskin preferably, because it will not keep dirt and suits any colour,—would answer every end. In fact, the true theory for arranging and furnishing a room of any kind is the same as the true theory for everything else, —bookbinding, for example,—to insist first of all that the end sought shall be attained, and seek for ornament chiefly through the perfection of the work.
But we shall be told it is useless for housekeepers bf moderate means to attempt to act ou these rules, or display originality, or try in any way to do as they like. They cannot afford it. Mr. Eastlake is never tired of repeating that nothing is cheap which cannot be obtained in thousands, and it is true that if one buys this year a satisfactory set of china or glass or an excellent piece of furniture, it will two years hence be nearly or quite impossible to replace it except at excessive cost. The pattern will have been disused, as any woman may ascertain by the very simple test of trying to renew a broken smelling-bottle. A month's search will not reveal a bottle which will fit, and the stopper, possibly valuable, must be sent to the manufacturer, to be detained a month or two and refitted at a cost six or eight times that of the original mould. The thirst for change not felt by the buyers is felt by the sellers, whose gains depend not upon the excellence of their goods but upon incessant alterations in their form, and the sellers are in some departments absolute. The only remedies for the purchaser are dogged obstinacy and self-will. Let every man or woman who is furnishing decide for himself or herself what lie wants, arrange his rooms as he pleases, take no counsel except from artists and books and his own sense of convenience, snub every seller who ventures to mutter " They are not used now," and, above all, give time to the search for the precise thing he wants. In a few cases in London he will be beaten by the master evil of the place, the leasehold tenures, which forbid nearly every kind of solid improvement ; but in the country his house, and in town his furniture, can be arranged his own way. 1Vith time and a little money anything can be accomplished, even the fur- nishing of a modern house so that it shall be a pleasant habitation, shall not require renewal more than once in a life-time, and shall not bear the most distant resemblance to an upholsterer's show- room.
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